


Heliotrope

by cato_universe



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Flowers, Gavin has issues, Good Friend Tina Chen, Happy Ending, Language of Flowers, M/M, Soft Upgraded Connor | RK900, no beta we die like men, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 01:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cato_universe/pseuds/cato_universe
Summary: In a world in which people valued the flowers that bloomed in their skin, displayed them proudly as proof of love at best and battle scars at worst, someone with unmarred skin was an anomaly, a myth, almost. There were stories about those people in fairy tales children heard at night. The heartless villain, the evil witch, the monster.Androids didn't have flowers.Neither did Gavin Reed.





	Heliotrope

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I don't know where this came from. Or rather, I know, but I wasn't expecting it. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy! Apparently I can only write about flowers XD

Androids had unmarred skin.

In a world in which people valued the flowers that bloomed in their skin, displayed them proudly as proof of love at best and battle scars at worst, someone with unmarred skin was an anomaly, a myth, almost. There were stories about those people, in fairy tales children heard at night. The heartless villain, the evil witch that tried to trick the children into the oven. The psychopaths in the movies, the monsters in the shadowy corners and under the bed, they all lacked flowers for anyone. After all, who could go their whole lives without loving someone else?

That’s why the flowers were considered soulmarks of sorts. Evidence inked into your skin of those you loved enough to carry their visible mark always with you. Most people acquired their first ones in their childhood, humble daisies and gerbera, cheerful flowers representing parents and those first precious friends.

For young adults the bloom of roses was a rite of passage. The first ones would usually bloom on the wrist, on the tender parts of the arms. They were loves to show off, inexperienced and strong. There would be pictures in social media, friends praising the delicate line of the petals, the beauty of the evidence of first love.

(No one talked about those that didn’t get roses, those who had purple irises and sweet blue hortensias decorating their shoulders like freckles. No one talked about those who got daffodils on their ribs, chrysanthemums on their chest. After all, people seem to think love for others should always be romantic to be of importance.)

The absence of flowers became the main reason humans found androids so eery: a thing that looked human, behaved like a human, but was unable to acquire marks for anyone?

Unable to love?

How could humans believe androids could love when there was not proof of it?

 

* * *

 

If Gavin prided himself of one thing, it was that he didn’t have flowers for anyone.

It hadn’t been something sudden; his conviction built little by little, like sand piled on the beach, day after day. It began the day when, at six years old, the other children in the swimming pool mocked him for his unmarked body. It insinuated itself, seamlessly etched into doubt, when as a teenager his friends stopped telling him secrets because he didn’t have marks for them, when the doctor told him he was _abnormal_ at twenty, when his partner left him when Gavin didn’t develop marks for him at thirty one.

(There's just no _proof_ , Gavin, how can I be sure you love me?)

Gavin Reed was like the monsters of the stories: he was an asshole, hated everyone, and didn’t have flowers.

(And it was true for everyone except for Tina. One drunken night Gavin had taken his shirt off in front of her, not to seduce her but to show her how much of a monster he was. Tina had not so much as flinched. She had rested one slender hand on Gavin’s shoulder, in the place she herself had a purple iris for him. “It doesn’t matter,” she’d said, earnest. “I know you, and it doesn’t matter.”

That night, as Gavin cried in her arms, ivy had climbed Tina’s ribs to nestle against her heart, the leaves deep green like a mossy forest.)

 

* * *

 

The thing that infuriated Gavin the most, the one thing he found he could not stand not matter how he tried, was the way androids could change their skin to form marks in the form of flowers.

All throughout his life, Gavin had always been told his feelings were fake. There was nothing to see, no visible way to read his heart, and if Gavin had not been so utterly fueled by _spite_ he might have believed it.

What _were_ fake, however, were the marks the androids mimicked.

Gavin had considered plenty of times getting himself a tattoo (for Tina, at least: people did it all the time, for different reasons) but in the end he had decided not to get fake marks. If his hideously bare body was testament of his twisted heart, then he would display it as proudly as others displayed their stupid crushes and their overbearing love.

No matter what others said, Gavin didn’t think he had hated many things in his life, but androids he hated.

 

* * *

 

When Nines smiled at him for the first time, Gavin felt a strange burn run down his arms, a feeling of small needles that people often identified with getting flowers.

He stood frozen in place, eyes wide and heart trying to beat out of his chest, and for an endless moment Gavin didn’t know if he was more terrified of the android’s sweet smile, the possibility he had just gotten marks for him, or that he hadn’t.

Gavin fled as soon as he’d been able, rubbing his arms through his jacket as if to soothe the sting, and paced in front of the mirror for forty five minutes before he dared to take his clothes off.

(He told himself he was not disappointed his arms were bare, that he didn’t _want_ flowers, much less for an android. He told himself he didn’t feel anything special for Nines anyway, that he tolerated him because Fowler had ordered him to, that his heart did not beat faster when Nines' clear eyes looked at him.)

_Broken_ , that dark corner of his mind whispered and Gavin bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, until the pain brought him back to reality.

 

* * *

 

Except, of course, Nines was good, and kind, and gentle in a way no one had ever been with Gavin in his whole life.

Nines’ thoughtful comments, his low voice, his serene presence-- it all grounded Gavin, made the anger melt like wax under the sun, leaving him pliant and relaxed, unable and unwilling to fight.

When he was with Nines, Gavin forgot sometimes what hate felt like. Nines was like the sun, and Gavin couldn’t help but be affected, a small withered plant too deprived of warmth not to soak it in when it was offered.

( _Don’t wish for more_ , the ugly voice in his head whispered in the night. _Don’t you know androids cannot love?_

But those were lies. Lies, because Gavin knew that if anyone in this world could love, it was Nines. Just not a broken person like him.)

 

* * *

 

Nines’ lips were soft and warm, gentle, and for the life of him Gavin couldn’t have pulled away.

They traded slow kisses, sweet even when they no longer could be called innocent, and Gavin’s chest hurt. In a last desperate attempt to deflect, he tried to bring lust into it, aggressiveness born from fear, but Nines cupped Gavin’s face and held him still, kissed him slowly until Gavin trembled, his breath coming in pants that Nines’ open mouth drank greedily.

Gavin hated it.

He hated androids, and he hated marks, and he hated his burning chest and not being able to hide from Nines’ kiss, from the feelings it conveyed. From the feelings and desires it stirred in him.

“I can’t,” Gavin choked out, suddenly blinded by fear. “I’m not-- I can’t--”

“Heliotrope,” Nines interrupted him. “Is the flower I always imagined for you.”

Gavin stared at Nines, heart shattered, and in a burst of energy fueled by stubbornness and resignation he freed himself from the android’s embrace and took off his shirt in one smooth movement.

There was a long silence in which Gavin didn’t dare look up, his heart as exposed as his skin.

There were no marks for Nines there. There were not for anyone, and never would be.

Nines, however, undeterred by the emptiness, closed the distance between them once again. He trailed slender hands down Gavin’s flushed chest to the top of the man’s jeans and up again. It was not a sexual touch, although in other circumstances it could have been. Nines’ touch was exploratory, tender, but there was also a firmness to it, a promise that made Gavin’s heart both soar and sink.

It felt like a brand. Like a claim.

“Gavin,” Nines whispered, pulling Gavin in until they were locked in an embrace again. “I knew. I knew and I don’t care. I’ve seen you, and I want you as you are.”

It was only when Nines hesitated that Gavin dared look at him. His eyes widened in surprise to see the shyness in the face of one that was always so determined, Nines’ soft gaze exposing as much vulnerability as Gavin’s unmarked skin.

“I...if there must be marks...if you want them, I can bear them for you,” Nines offered, voice low and brittle. His lashes were lowered, a smudge against pale skin, and Gavin swallowed, dancing in the edge of the abyss for a long moment.

With shaky hands he unbuttoned Nines’ shirt, humbled when the android allowed it to fall into the floor together with his white jacket. Nines’ chest was smooth, dark clothes having hidden perfect skin and a chiseled body, but Gavin did not have the attention to spare for that. Flowers were blooming down Nines’ arms, small clusters of purple bursting into existence like delicate fireworks.

They bloomed over the hollow of Nines’ throat, around his neck in a collar, and like a waterfall they spilled over his chest too, leaves curling over his thirium pump until the android was completely covered in green and purple and blue.

It was only until his next breath came in a gasp that Gavin realized he had forgotten to breathe.

“That’s too much even for me, tin can,” Gavin breathed, his chuckle watery. He didn’t dare touch them, but his own hands and arms tingled in sympathy, a phantom pain of the flowers he himself could not have.

Nines smiled, eyes soft, and that was what made Gavin finally touch, just a shy finger against the most tender spot of Nines’ throat. “It’s for both of us,” Nines said.

_Fake_ , Gavin had called android's flowers once. A mimicry.

How stupid can a person be, to decide for others what’s real and what’s not? Had he learnt nothing from his own experiences?

Overcome by emotion, a single tear rolled down Gavin’s cheek, fresh like the first drop of rain in spring. The kisses he bestowed upon Nines were light as rain too. His lips caressed and kissed, teeth nipped and bit until there was nothing between them but softness and warmth.

“We don’t need them,” Gavin smiled, enjoying the shudder his ministrations caused on the android, and pulled away to admire his handiwork. The mark he sucked into Nines’ skin was not the angry red of a love bite. Instead, the small white shape his lips left behind where Nines’ synthskin had retreated was a star against the colorful tapestry made by the flowers. “We can make our own.”

 

* * *

 

The marks they made were not shaped like flowers. On Gavin, they were instead an angry red, bruises that sometimes purpled and were tender to the touch. On Nines they were white like constellations, and although those maks never lasted, Gavin loved them nonetheless.

Sometimes, Nines wore in his arms purple heliotropes, always hidden under long sleeves, a secret between the two of them they only talked about in private.

Gavin Reed did not have flowers.

Others may call him a monster, abnormal, a freak.

He did not have flowers. But he had Nines, and lazy mornings, and long evenings curled together in the couch. He had a cat, and a home, and laughter, warmth, and trust.

So he didn’t care.

 


End file.
